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Why is my Curriculum White?

A Lancaster launch of the national NUS campaign “Why is my Curriculum White?” will be held next week at which all staff and students are welcome and encouraged to attend. Please circulate widely to colleagues and friends. Watch the UCL campaign video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dscx4h2l-Pk

The campaign began at UCL and has now spread to several universities across the country, including Leeds, Manchester and Oxford as part of the movements to decolonise education. It is student run, and supported by Lancaster’s Student Union and some Lancaster academics. It is a movement to decolonize the curriculum on offer at this university. This requires looking reflexively at the curriculum; learning to ask questions, such as why we have certain topics made available, whilst others are omitted; and creating a voice for those who are underrepresented by the education system. In the words of Nathaniel Coleman, who founded the movement at UCL, the campaign is it to “mobilise a social movement around the unifying symbol of the Eurocentric colonial kyriarchy,” basically moving curriculum on from white, Eurocentric, imperialist colonial washing, to a new paradigm of looking at the past and its effect on how we read it today. “Black” and “white” histories in this country go far back together and are intrinsically linked, so why is that we are still saturated in works by predominately white education makers, whilst ethnic minorities are essentially written out of histories and curriculum at many educational establishments?